GRACE BETWEEN THE
LINES
Formerly “Grace Notes”
A WEEKLY DIGEST OF READINGS & REFLECTIONS ON GRACE IN LIFE
Week of May
10, 2009
www.geocities.com/bikehiker/gn051009.html
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daily blog @ http://bikehiker.blogspot.com
THIS WEEK’S
I Am One in the Middle
Dispel Disappointment
Resisting or Embracing Change
A Sacramental Use of
Money
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I AM ONE IN
THE MIDDLE
Can't
remember how many years ago I wrote this, but feeling it afresh these days
Pushed and pulled
Squeezed and pressured
Looked to and pointed at
Expected and set up with hidden expectations
Asked to lead and criticized in the leading
I am one in the middle
Foregoing securities
Risking for hope
Believing in community
Trusting for guidance
Putting it on the line
I am one in the middle
Casting off convention
Out on a limb
Digging for truth
Straddling disciplines
Witnessing grace
I am one in the middle
Past and future
There and here
Those and these
Them and ours
That and this
I am one in the middle
Transition
Opposition
Redemption
Reconciliation
New vision
I am graced to be in the middle
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DISPEL DISAPPOINTMENT
Reacting
to disappointment gives it power over us, but responding to it activates grace.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. I have disappointed. And I am sure I have at some time been
described as "a disappointment." On the other hand, I have been disappointed. And I have at times critically and unfairly
described others and institutions as a disappointment. Disappointment runs in all kinds of
directions.
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS? When expectations and capacities run high, we
tend to think and talk in these terms. Even
in regard to God. Read Philip Yancy's insightful book Disappointment
With God. Sometimes disappointment is rooted in
unrealistic expectations of ourselves, others, institutions, and/or God. Sometimes they are rooted in bad information
and false assumptions. Comparisons are
also breeding ground for disappointment. When capacities are recognizably well above
average and things don't come together "as expected," disappointment
and disillusionment can assert their immobilizing grip.
LIVING AGAINST DISAPPOINTMENT. But disappointment must not define who we are
or what we do. It does no good--and may
do unnecessary harm--to simply react to disappointment with blaming, shifting
focus, escaping, etc. When we simply
react to disappointment, we give it power over us. Our outlook and actions tend to reflect that
we are living against it. And it defines
us.
INSTEAD, RESPOND TO IT. On the other
hand, it's useful to pay attention to disappointment. Instead of reacting to it, respond to it. We can monitor, critique, and respond to it
without it defining us. Where is this
disappointment coming from? Is it realistic?
Are expectations realistic? Do they match capacities? How am I processing disappointment? Is there anything I can learn and grow from
it? What adjustments or changes might it
be pointing toward? What breakthroughs?
PROACTIVITY. There's
a significant difference between reacting vs
responding to disappointment--and myriad other challenges in life. The difference is proactivity--what
M. Scott Peck described as a pause amid crisis for questions, reflection and
decision. I would add: contemplative prayer.
EMERGENT GRACE. Disappointment, though
it is present, need not define who we are or what we do. In choosing to respond to it, I also find
other resources that orient me in a very different direction in the face of it.
Grace, gratitude, forgiveness, hope:
these possibilities and realities emerge as responses to situations that
otherwise could only be seen through a lens of disappointment.
WHERE I CHOOSE TO LIVE. I'm not sure I am ready to say that
disappointment can be converted
into gratitude, but at least I am saying that amid disappointment, if I choose
not to react to it but gently, firmly respond to it, there is an emergent grace
that can give birth to gratitude, forgiveness, and hope. That's where I choose to go and where I hope
to live.
------------------
RESISTING OR EMBRACING CHANGE
Recently,
I found some solace and guidance in this little piece by W. H. Auden
"We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die."
I recognize
the constancy and importance of change.
At the same time, I usually resist it…initially, at least. I am not one to change easily. But even more than changing work or situation,
I resist being changed. One is an outward challenge; the other is an
inward work. Change that is outward is
preferable to change that is inward, particularly when inward change is what is
most needed. But sometimes change of
situation and inward change go together, as if calling
to one another. But as much as I dread
change, as Auden puts it, I am willing to "climb the cross of the
moment" and dare to let my "illusions die."
----------------
A SACRAMENTAL USE OF MONEY
In Dissenter in a Great Society, William
Stringfellow offers a wonderful perspective on the use of money:
A SIGN OF THE RESTORATION OF LIFE. “Freedom
from the idolatry of money, for a Christian, means that money becomes useful
only as a sacrament—as a sign of the restoration of life wrought in this world
by Christ. If, in worship, human beings offer themselves and
all of their decisions, actions, and words to God, it is well that they used
money as the witness to that offering. The sacramental use of money in the formal and
gathered worship of the church is authenticated, as are all churchly
sacramental practices, in the sacramental use of money in the common life of
the world.”
FREEDOM FROM THE IDOLATRY MONEY. “The
consistent mark of such a commitment of money is a person’s freedom from
idolatry of money. That
includes not simply freedom from moral dependence upon the pursuit,
acquisition, or accumulation of money for the sake of justifying oneself or
ones conduct or actions or opinions, either to oneself or to somebody else. It
means the freedom to have money, to use money, to spend money without
worshiping money, and thus it means the freedom to do without money, if need
be, or, having some, to give it away to anyone who seems to need money to
maintain life a while longer.”
NOT MY OWN. “The charity of Christians
in the use of money sacramentally has no serious similarity to conventional
charity but is always a specific dramatization of the members of the Body of
Christ losing their life in order that the world be
given life. For the members of the church, therefore, it always
implies a particular confession that their money is not their own because their
lives are not their own, but by the example of God's own love, belong to the
world.”
GIVING AWAY THE GIFT OF LIFE. “That
one’s own life belongs to the world, that one’s money and possessions, talents
and time, influence and wealth, all belong to the whole world is, I trust, why
the saints are habitués of poverty and ministers to the outcasts, friends of
the humiliated and, commonly, unpopular themselves. Contrary to many legends, the saints are not
spooky figures, morally superior, abstentious, pietistic.
In truth, all human beings are called to
be saints, but that just means called to be fully human, to be perfect that is,
whole, mature, fulfilled. The saints are
simply those men and women who relish the event of life as a gift and who
realize that the only way to honor such a gift is to give it away.”
---------------
Keep looking forward…and write when
you can ([email protected])
John Hay, Jr.
Indianapolis, Indiana (where things are ratcheting up for
the Indy 500. Jared and I participated
in last Saturday’s Pole Day and witnessed Helio Castroneves top the 11 fastest drivers and race cars in the
world at the fastest race course in the world.
Eat your heart out, NASCAR!)
Online projects:
Bikehiker blog (daily posts): http://bikehiker.blogspot.com
Grace Between
the Lines (weekly digest): www.geocities.com/bikehiker
My Letters to the President of the
Peace & Holiness: http://peaceandholiness.blogspot.com
Bicycle India 2007: http://bicycleindia2007.blogspot.com
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